In 267781GR (mid-2014, Terran reckoning), scientists at Earth's Large Hadron Collider succeeded in observing a true Higgs boson. Several false positives had happened before that, notably when the LHC thread on a discussion board called the Cartographers' Guild passed fourteen thousand posts and achieved a critical mass. Encouraged by the LHC success, amateurs and professionals alike began the pursuit of the related Magnum boson (Dr. Tomas Magnum was a contemporary and antagonist of Higgs, and had drastically different ideas about particle physics).

Where the Higgs boson had required decades of effort by tens of thousands of people, and billions of dollars of investment, the Magnum boson was both anticlimactic and climactic.

Anticlimactic because the LHC work resulted in some rather specialized math that made the search easier. Indeed, when Rutgers University Associate Professor of Physics Singmon Tsu produced his fateful few dozen Magnum-epsilon bosons, scores of other researchers were nearly as close to success.

Just as well only Dr. Tsu succeeded. We term the Magnum boson fateful, and climactic, because as we all know when one creates multiple Magnum (any of the -delta through -theta variants) high-mass particles, they tend to coalesce... themselves and all other particles within their influence.

ALL others.

Had Terrans Yimling Chi, Brendan O'Rourke, Siriah Srimnesitan, or Jorge Hernandez di Vorsela succeeded with their own Magnums within the initial growth phase of Dr. Tsu's boson-agglomeration, the resultant singularity could have encompassed the entirety of Terra's solar system instead of "merely" the Earth and its moon.

That would've been a shame.

As it was, the Earthlings' "success" joined the other six or seven thousand planetary-mass black holes throughout our galaxy -- most, tombstones of civilizations that attained a knowledge of high-mass boson production, without a stabilizing knowledge of their danger and inhibition. At least they did not emulate the long-vanished people near the galaxy's heart who some centuries of aeons ago collected nearly a trillion Magnum-eta bosons -- now a four hundred seventy-five million (and growing) stellar mass singularity.

__________________________________________________

All that to set up the simplest post-apocalyptic map of Earth possible:

-----> . <-----

... a geometric point. Suitably generalized, per good cartographic practice - this symbolization being a Times Roman 12-point 'point'. If you'd like I can blow that up a bit. Here it is magnified 625 million times:

-----> . <-----

Looks a lot like the first one, right?

Now, if that isn't "mappy" enough I may add a view sometime during the week or so after Dr. Tsu's "success". It did after all take eight days for Earth to fully coalesce.

I do love these typographic maps. The one-dimensional side-view of 2-D Flatland, this singularity. Mind you, this one is three-dimensional, just all three dimensions are pretty much zero.

Oh. Even though a single ascii character is an extremely efficient map, I suppose I'll follow the rules and post a graphical version.

### LATEST WIP ###

<caveat - scant real science is expressed or implied - this is a Fantasy Map after all>

EricPoehlsen

11-03-2011, 06:01 PM

... :D

Now just put the whole thing including the text into a nice infographic ...

rdanhenry

11-06-2011, 02:04 AM

That reminds me. I need to do my lazy post-apocalyptic entry. And my science will be pretty solid.

Not having spectacular results yet, but here's an idea what I'm shooting for, earlier in the collapse. I will combine something vaguely like this (only better shaded ?! ) with the late-view dot.

### LATEST WIP ###

[ATTACH=CONFIG]39717/ATTACH]

maxsdaddy

11-06-2011, 05:39 PM

Very nice. Looks somewhat like implosion models done on Cray computers for supernovas. You don't have a Cray do you? lol

Lukc

11-06-2011, 05:50 PM

Nice idea ... I like your take on the Earth Apple :D

jbgibson

11-07-2011, 01:47 AM

No Cray, sadly.

<munch, munch>....

jbgibson

11-15-2011, 10:53 PM

### latest wip ###
39974

jbgibson

11-15-2011, 11:40 PM

You say "how could some later arrival from distant stars know details of the planet's implosion?" Sad story, that. You see, the last Earthlings were not those secreted in some underground hideaway, consumed finally by the crumbling crust and spastic magma. No, the last Earthlings were the six who were on something called the International Space Station. See, a typical boson-started planetary implosion doesn't attain sufficient gravitational pull to grow much beyond its original planetary mass. Rather, the original planet just shrinks down to an infinitesimal point, still bound by the laws of celestial mechanics. Terra's singularity continued to orbit its star; indeed it still does. This primitive orbital facility the Earthlings had put up continued to circle the tiny hole in space long after its few denizens had expired. The recordings they had made showed us the progress of the implosion - a seldom-recorded event, since its cause usually wipes out the people who cause it. They likewise recorded the extinction of the human species some eleven months later. Four of the six chose their own death, stepping out the station's airlock. The final two, as their last writings testify, succumbed to a failing air factory - fixable, but to what end? At most they could have recycled air and water until their limited food ran out. For this was not a self-sufficient orbital colony, but a mere foothold. A shame really - according to material translated from the long-cold station, this human people were on the verge of stepping out to colonize a neighboring world. That further-out orb would have been a harsh home, but you can bet it would NOT have harbored high-mass physics experimentation!

jbgibson

11-15-2011, 11:53 PM

What do I mean "antipodal point of emergence?" Well, the original microsingularity was created having a significant downward velocity. Unstoppable as it was by the planet's rock and iron, it punched not one, but several holes as it oscillated about the center of Earth's mass. Really, the first few were pretty insignificant, sized at a mere few billion protons' accumulation. It was perhaps the sixth or eighth oscillation that finally rooted out a big enough hole to start the geologic activity that resulted days later in a crumbling planet. And yes, I know the planet was rotating all the while - it just so happened the big-enough-for-lava-vent "orbit" had precessed back around close to the start point.

I suppose in a bow to real physics, I should calculate how long that would take. If such a singularity were quietly placed at earth's center it would take a while to cause big trouble - material might collapse in at a rate moderated by the stiffness and structure of the metal. Hmm - liquid core, but exposed to low pressure of an expanding cavity.... just don't know how that would play out. I just assert it would end badly, so there's my catastrophe scenario. Not as final as RDan's I admit, but slightly more personal, given it "could" happen in human-scale time.

jbgibson

11-16-2011, 12:04 AM

Btw, I had been dissatisfied with my results at trying to make earthlike continents from scratch. SO I took one of the NASA blue marble views where they subtracted the clouds (by day 3.5 most of the atmosphere has drained down the boson hole, so no clouds). I generated a bunch of ragged randomness with whacko vertical exaggeration, stuck it beneath the blue marble layer, and faded out the surface under oceans to get a bit of bare mud ocean bottom. A bit of warping to sink in Rutgers, and thar she goes.

Ten geek points to the discoverer of the pun/ cultural reference.

Lukc

11-16-2011, 02:54 AM

I can't find it ... unless you meant 3.5 and D&D or thar she goes and the typical Moby Dick story.